“Not out there.” He strolls around me, presenting me with the hard line of his profile. Firelight dances over him, caressing the strong lines of his face, seeking the elusive hollows like a lover desperate to touch. I rotate, following him with the tip of my sword. My grip begins to sweat around the hilt, and I readjust my fingers. “Alone out there...is a different kind of thing. A different kind of alone.”
He continues his deceptively lazy saunter around me, setting my teeth on edge. “Let me tell you what it’s like out there when you’re alone and ill-equipped. In that great vast endless sea of white where every landmark looks the same.” One side of his mouth lifts in a bitter twist. “If you’re not hiding or fighting off one predator or another, then you can’t even think straight and make good decisions because you’re so fucking hungry. Sometimes you start to see things, hear things.” His eyes go a bit glassy, and I know he’s back there again, remembering. “You can’t even tell what’s real.”
My chest squeezes. “How old were you?” I whisper, telling myself not to care, to not let my curiosity get the best of me, to not fall for his allure.
He’s like a beautiful stallion, all fluidly dancing muscle beneath taut skin, and I can’t help watching him hungrily, listening with greedy ears as though his words have the power to cast their own spells.
Prismatic eyes flick to me. “Twelve.”
My stomach dips. Younger than I was when I fell prey to my curse. Younger than anyone should be left to survive on their own.
“I hadn’t come into my own yet...could scarcely summon my dragon.” As though asked, he explains, “We don’t begin to shift until we reach adulthood. I’d only just learned how to transform into my dragon before I was cast out.”
I try not to appear interested, keeping my sword trained on him, and yet anything to do with him or dragonkind vastly interests me, feeding my well for knowledge of this world.
“Who cast you out?”
“My pride...the skelm.”
Something sticky and sick curdles in the back of my throat. “You said you weren’t one of—”
“I’m not.” His words come at me like the flay of a whip. “I rejected that life once I understood it. They took me on my first hunt right after I turned, and I...I wouldn’t do it. Icouldn’t.” He looks away.
“Do what?”
“What they told me to. What theydid. What theydo.” He looked at me then. “What they did to your village is customary. They believe it their duty. To destroy. To feed on humans. To kill. I wouldn’t...I turned and flew home. When they returned, they cast me out.” He huffs out a breath. “Twelve years old. My voice had scarcely even deepened. I wasn’t strong enough to maintain my dragon form. I was just a scrawny lad wandering the Crags, sleeping in trees at night to avoid predators.”
It’s not an image I want, but it pushes through the door anyway. Tage, a vulnerable boy with dark, tender eyes, crawls inside me and takes residence right beside the cursed, lonely girl who pleaded and begged her family to speak to her, to see her.
Tage lifts a hand. “Until I found this cave, quite by accident.I was running from a pack of wolves and discovered it. I built a home here, alone at first, then eventually finding the others. Arvos. Danhy. Viggo. Cyphus.” I resist curling my lip at this last mention. “My survival was luck. An accident. Happenstance. Any number of times I could have died...but you think you can manage it? You think you can take on the Crags and survive? Should I just let you go out there to perish?”
“Or you could just return me to Penterra yourself,” I suggest.
He angles his head sharply in a way that is all animal, his nostrils flaring as though catching a scent. “I can’t do that.”
“Youwon’t.”
He ignores that, exhales long and slow, and then asks with a nod to my sword, “You really know how to use that?”
“You think I don’t?” An idea comes to me. “Let me show you. Go on. Pick a weapon.”
He looks amused, and it ignites a spark inside me. “Go on,” I press. “Let’s fight. If I draw first blood, then you let me go.”
“I’m not doing that.”
The look he gives me is insulting. “Afraid to lose to a human?” I goad.
“You’re being a child.”
“Come now. Let’s play.”
At my taunt, his amusement falters. Something passes over his violet-dark eyes. The air between us charges, becomes as dense as the mist coiling low around our ankles. His gaze swings slowly to the nearby arsenal as though considering my proposal.
My pulse flutters erratically at my throat as he approaches and selects a sword. He’s really going to do it. Everything inside me seizes, tightening with resolve.
“Very well.” He tosses the weapon in his hand like it’s no heavier than a spoon. “Show me what you can do.”
We circle one another, taking measure.
